Rainy Season
by Rebecca Parker
Summary: Willow has problems adjusting post-"Grave"


TITLE: Rainy Season (1/1)  
AUTHOR: Rebecca Parker   
EMAIL: Rebecca@bizarroland.com   
RATING: PG-13  
SUMMARY: Willow finds it difficult adjusting.   
SPOILERS: Post "Grave"  
FEEDBACK: Yes please.   
DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon owns all.   
DISTRIBUTION: Just ask.   
IMPROV #49: Stephen King Title Challenge.   
DEDICATION: To Moe. Just cause she's her.   
  
  
  
She used to watch the phone, as if she could will it to ring if she wanted it to. She did that for years, hoping Xander would call asking for help with his math homework or wanting to make an ice cream run.   
  
She could make it ring now if she wanted it to. She could make it get up and dance across the room if she wanted it to.   
  
When she thinks about how, only a few days ago, she would have gladly done it just to prove that she could, she cringes.   
  
So much has changed in a matter of days that she hardly feels like the same person. She's morphed back and forth and back again, and she feels like her skin is the only thing keeping her together.   
  
Her room seems darker than ever before - as it changed with her and has yet to change back. She's back at home now - with her mother and father looking over her and not understanding what happened to her daughter, or why she never comes out of her room except to creep downstairs to the kitchen and carry up the bare minimum of food back up to her room.   
  
Maybe it would have been easier to stay at Buffy's, she thinks, but then she remembers Tara's fallen body on the floor. She knows it isn't there anymore, but it always will be for her. She'll always see it there, and she doesn't think she could bear it.   
  
They don't understand why she doesn't want to see them, and she knows it worries them more than anything. Xander told her he felt responsible for keeping her back on the side of sanity, and she knows it must be killing him that she won't even answer his calls. She knows it must eat him up that she won't open up her door even when she hears him pleading on the other side.   
  
She doesn't feel healed. She still feels like there's a rip inside her - bleeding and oozing and no matter what, it won't close. She doesn't think it ever will, and she can't face them with the chance that she'll never quite go back.   
  
She can't sleep as it is. Moments here and there, yes, but every time she closes her eyes she sees things. She sees things she knows she deserves to be haunted by, and the thought that they'll be there behind her eyes for the rest of her life makes her not want to have one.   
  
She wonders what Buffy would think about that. She tries to figure out what Giles would say if he knew how many times she had held the knife up to her wrist in the last 24 hours. She wonders if Xander would still love Bleedy-Dying Willow as much as he loved Scary-Veiny Willow.   
  
She thinks - if they could forgive her for what she had done already - would they forgive her for what she's going to do next?   
  
She had taken life already. What was one more?  
  
She can hear her parents arguing downstairs, no matter how many pillows she piles on top of her head. Three days later, and her senses are still heightened. She can taste the orange juice she had sipped the day before; she can smell the soap she softly rubbed into her skin during her shower that morning; and she can still feel the cold stainless steel against her skin.   
  
She had started to press it down, but stopped. She wasn't sure why she did - when everything in her head was screaming at her to keep going. Maybe it was because she knew those voices in her head weren't all hers.   
  
It was Warren's. It was Rack's. It was the whole world she had almost killed with her grief.   
  
But her parents are arguing downstairs, and she can't shut them out. She hears her father complaining that she isn't paying rent. She can hear her mother whispering that there seems to be something "not right" with her daughter. She can hear them whisper about a place out of town where she can't embarrass them.   
  
Of course, they don't use those words. But she knows it's what they mean.   
  
She wonders how they would react if they found her here in the morning. She wonders what her mother would say if she bled on the quilt her Nana had made her when she was 10. She wonders what her father would think if she cut her wrist in the shape of a pentagram. That would both be ironic and oddly fitting at the same time, she thinks.   
  
She's cold under her blanket, and she tucks herself in deeper. She thinks about what she knows tomorrow will bring, and she decides not to do it in her bed. She remembers Jenny, and thinks that would be more painful than necessary.   
  
The floor, she thinks. That's where Tara was taken from her. On the cold floor, where not even in death she could find comfort.   
  
She's sure her mother would be just as upset if she bled on the pretty white carpet, and she's morbidly satisfied by that thought.   
  
She thinks she'll go to sleep one last time now. There's nothing she can say to anyone - no last phone calls to make, no letters to write stained with her tears. They'll all understand why she did it - in time.   
  
Time heals all wounds, they say. But she doesn't have the patience to find out.   
  
  
  
The End. 


End file.
